Barry Gifford, Baby Cat-Face (1995)

Almost a decade ago(!), I read through all of Barry Gifford's stories about Sailor and Lula, collected in a single volume. Sailor and Lula are two young lovers from the South who grow old together across the course of the books; most of the books are rambling road trips, excuses for Gifford to embed stories within stories with weird dialogue and strange personalities. The philosophy of the stories is perhaps best explained by this exchange from Sailor's Holiday:

"Ain't it somethin'... how it's just one weird thing happens after another?"
     "Stay tuned.... I got a powerful hunch there ain't never gonna be a end to it." 

Baby Cat-Face by Barry Gifford

Published: 1995
Read: December 2025

However, there was technically one Sailor and Lula story omitted from "The Complete Novels." In 1995, in the seventeen-year gap between the sixth and seventh Sailor and Lula novels, Gifford published Baby Cat-Face. Upon reading it, I can see why it was omitted: it consists of three short stories (maybe one is a novelette?) with some linking material: "Baby Cat-Face," "Mother Bizco's Temple of the Few Washed Pure by Her Blood," and "The Lost Sons of Cassiopeia," but Sailor and Lula only appear in the first one, which is actually set before Wild at Heart, the first Sailor and Lula story. It would have been an odd inclusion... though perhaps no odder than Perdita Durango. (Maybe "Baby Cat-Face" could have been included on its own?)

Anyway, the short but unhelpful review of Baby Cat-Face is that if you like the kind of thing Barry Gifford does, then Baby Cat-Face is a good example of it. If you don't like the kind of thing that Barry Gifford does, then don't read this book. I do like the thing Barry Gifford does, so I enjoyed reading this a lot; I think I blew through the whole book in a day.

The first story was definitely my favorite, that classic Barry Gifford structure where we follow a bunch of people in their own strands as they encounter weirdness. The young woman Baby Cat-Face goes on a bus ride with a former music star, and their bus gets commandeered by members of a feminist art institute who force them to watch ballet at gunpoint. It's just full of weird goofy stuff which is a joy to read, such as when the bus hijacker, who is a very large woman, declares, "My name is Daylight DuRapeau. My mama say she name me Daylight 'cause she had a feelin' the world was gonna see a whole lotta me. And as y'all can positively witness, there be considerable of me to see."

The later parts of the book I found less interesting; Baby Cat-Face joins a weird cult and then ends up giving birth to a kid with magical powers. I certainly don't object that it's weird, but it is a style of weirdness less to my taste than what Gifford was doing in "Baby Cat-Face" itself. Still, one is never not entertained reading Barry Gifford, and it all reads quickly and pleasantly no matter how weird and disturbing it gets.

This actually isn't the end of my Sailor and Lula journey; after The Complete Novels came out in 2010, Gifford actually released one more Sailor and Lula story in 2015, so I'll track that down next. Hopefully in less than another decade!